Posts tagged operating system

Has it truly been six months already? It feel like just yesterday we were kicking the tires on a fresh install of Saucy Salamander. Now Canonical is pushing out the latest version of its popular Linux distro. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (code named: Trusty Tahr) is part of its long term support series which ...

Jolla's got a big problem, and the company knows it. The small Finnish startup has grand plans to upend the smartphone paradigm with its modular phone and unique gesture-based OS, but that foreign approach has left some users confused. The MeeGo-derived Sailfish OS relies entirely on swipe navigat...

Firefox OS is unquestionably a work in progress, but with a point upgrade a few weeks after launch (and the release of the ZTE Open), at least we can confirm that Mozilla is, in fact, putting the work in. The 1.1 version of the software is available now for users of the mobile operating system, fe...

If you've been actively waiting to pre-order a brand new operating system on DVD, then a) We're glad this article found you, and b) You might be gratified to hear that boxed copies of Windows 8.1 are currently available to purchase at the source link, for delivery on October 17th. Unlike Windows 8...

New hardware without a software refresh? Don't make Jeff Bezos laugh. Today's arrival of three new slates also marks the unveiling of the company's latest tablet operating system. And this time, it even has a name. See, Amazon's been using "Fire OS" internally to describe the software powering its...

In a market crowded by ocelots, cows and mountain lions, it's nice to see an operating system that isn't named after an animal. The trend bucking OS? Debian's 7.0 update, Wheezy. Okay, it's technically the name of a penguin from Toy Story, but we'll give it a pass. The distro's latest revision hit...

"The [story behind the history of Home] was about making an experience that flows through friends and people. We saw three ways that we could do this. One, we could go and build an operating system. Second, we could dig into Android deeply in order to see how we could we fundamentally change / for...

Ready for your quarterly dose of Windows 8 sales figures? After hearing that some 40 million licenses had been sold through last November, the company's CFO and CMO for Windows Tammi Reller announced here at CES that Microsoft has sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses to date. According to her, that ...

It's unusual, to say the least, for us to spend a year with a product before publishing our review. In the case of Windows 8, we've written thousands of words already, starting with our first hands-on in September of 2011, followed by deep dives on the Developer Preview, Consumer Preview, Release ...

Well, it's no Key Lime Pie, but Android 4.2 is certainly a treat in its own right. The latest version of Google's mobile OS makes a number of evolutionary improvements to its already impressive repertoire -- including a new quick settings menu that can be accessed from the notification pull down a...

If you'd rather not let your Nexus 7 live out its life as a Jelly Bean-toting device, Canonical's freshly minted Ubuntu Nexus 7 Desktop Installer can help. Instead of allowing Ubuntu to ride shotgun with Android, the installer requires unlocking the device's bootloader, which wipes the slate clean...

With Windows 8 Microsoft is pushing manufacturers away from a traditional BIOS to UEFI with Secure Boot. But that poses problems for alternative OSes like Linux, because UEFI requires any software have a signed certificate. The Linux Foundation has been looking for a solution and thinks that it ma...

The last couple of Linux kernel updates have been a bit of a circus, with Android merging in the 3.3 ring and graphics integration on a (noisy) 3.4 center stage. Version 3.6 of the open source kernel has less flashy, more serene features this time, with hybrid standby, a revised file system and ot...

Huawei's boss must have been a Boy Scout, since he's taken its "be prepared' motto deeply to his heart. CEO Wan Biao has told Reuters that his company is working on its own mobile OS just in case its partners "won't let us use their system[s] one day." We don't expect to ever see the software, but...

Now that its successor is available, you're unlikely to hear much excitement for Windows Server 2008 around IT water coolers, but that's not to suggest it'll fade into oblivion anytime soon. In fact, Microsoft has extended its mainstream support of the server OS -- previously set to expire on July...

ZTE just can't get enough mobile OS's. The manufacturer is all over Android, it's got Windows Phone 8 coming out of leaky pores, and now it's revealed plans to launch phones based on the Firefox OS (formerly "Boot to Gecko") as early as the first quarter of next year. That's not so surprising, per...

If you're a Linux user squarely in the Gnome desktop camp and sneer with disdain at the mention of Unity, there's good news -- your preferred flavor is coming, uncontaminated, to Ubuntu. Though "GNOMEBuntu" was originally floated as a name for the new environment, that idea was apparently kiboshed...

At this point, we're expecting very few surprises when it comes to Windows 8: Microsoft just shipped the final code to OEMs, and the company already published a list of staggered dates when developers, volume licensees and Joe Schmo consumers would be able to download the software. We already knew...